HTTP is a complex protocol that deals with data of different modality and has numerous optimizations that—if implemented properly—can lead to a significant increase in web service performance.

At the same time, web application developers have less time to deal with low-level issues and optimizations. The mere idea of decoupling a web application server from a frontend server shifts the focus on managing incoming traffic to the frontend, while shifting the focus on functionality, application logic, and features to the web application server. This is where Nginx comes into play as a decoupling point.

An example of a decoupling point is SSL termination: Nginx receives and processes inbound SSL connections, it forwards the request over plain HTTP to an application server, and wraps the received response back into SSL. The application server no longer needs to take care of storing certificates, SSL sessions, handling encrypted and unencrypted transmission, and so on.

Other...